Backyard Buoys project will give residents real time data such as wave height to whaling crews and communities throughout the North Slope. A system of buoys will be displaced across the slope this summer.

An Alaska company says changing ice conditions in the North Slope area have allowed it to make a bulk fuel delivery to Prudhoe Bay by barge for the first time.

"These ridges that we’re standing on, there would have been more of them, and they would have been bigger," ice researcher Andy Mahoney said. "The features that we now see, they’re something of a shadow from the past." Listen now

The roughly 300 miles of hard-packed snow roads were constructed under the Community Winter Access Trails (CWAT) project, headed by the North Slope Borough.

Snow is melting sooner and coming in later on the North Slope, and that, in turn, is having an affect on other ecological variables.

Every winter, a massive infrastructure project takes place on the North Slope one thats designed to disappear. Ice roads are built to minimize the oil industrys footprint on the sensitive tundra, and melt away in spring. Many of the oil industrys multi-million dollar projects on the North Slope cant be built until the ice roads are finished each year.

North Slope facilities in Alaska closed due to severe blizzard conditions with winds up to 75 mph and low visibility.